Garden Fresh Salsa, made with juicy tomatoes, sweet Vidalia onions, crisp sweet garden bell peppers, spicy fresh jalapeno, sweet corn on the cob and fragrant garden cilantro.

Garden Fresh Summer Salsa

As I write this, we're running up on mid-August already and I realize that I've got quite a few summer posts like this one to catch up on! So don't go fussin' at me for posting a series of non-traditional recipes that may not necessarily fit into the "Southern" recipe box. Besides our southern favorites and classic southern recipes, like everybody else, we also enjoy a wide variety of other foods too, like this.

Simple syrup sweetened iced tea - refreshing!

Pitcher Perfect Sweet Tea

Summers in the South mean high tea consumption and during this ever present heat wave these past few months, I've been going through ice as fast as kudzu growing on a hillside.

Fried green tomatoes, topped with shrimp in a fresh tomato basil cream sauce.

Fried Green Tomatoes with Shrimp and Tomato Basil Cream Sauce

Recently, I was watching a feature on our local TV channel, where a local restaurant (now closed), was featured. They showed an appetizer dish from their menu, of fried green tomatoes with shrimp, in a tomato basil cream sauce. Well, it looked so good, I knew I had to make my own version of it. I don't know if this is anything like what they have on their menu, but it sure is mighty good and makes a fantastic main dish too.

Sweet Vidalia onions, stuffed with garlic and butter and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, wrapped in bacon and placed in individual packets to be cooked on the grill or oven.

Baked Vidalia Onions

If you're a lover of Vidalia onions like I am, isn't that just a thing of beauty? I mean really! How I love these sweet Vidalia onions in the summer, and I cry, quite literally, when they are gone until the next season rolls around and I have to use those stronger yellow onions. Sometimes I have to step outside just to clear my eyes, but that never happens with my sweet Vidalias.

 

Old fashioned, authentic southern tea cakes are basic, simple sugar cookies in their list of ingredients - butter, sugar, flour and eggs - but they speak so much more to our history, heritage and memories.

Old Fashioned Southern Tea Cakes

Food and memories are so intertwined in southern cooking that just the mention of things like fried pies, drinking custard, picking blackberries for cobbler and preserves, or biscuit bread, can bring back a flood of memories associated with loved ones long past. If there is one single food that invokes that excitement for Southerners though, it surely must be a Southern Tea Cake.

Fried green tomatoes dipped in milk, then dredged in a combination of flour, cornmeal and crumbled saltine crackers, then pan fried.

Fried Green Tomatoes II

I was looking for a sturdier coating for my fried green tomatoes to use with another recipe that I was working on, so I played around with the way I've been making them for years, and finally settled on this new combination. These green tomatoes turned out fantastic topped with the shrimp with fresh tomato and basil cream sauce I made.

The original coating is a basic blend of cornmeal and all purpose flour, that frankly the perfectionist in me has vacillated between adding to, subtracting from, and changing around anyway over the years. There is only a small window of time to experiment with fried green tomatoes and a gal can only consume so many, after all!

 

Preserves, made from fresh, ripe blackberries, sugar and lemon.

Blackberry Preserves

Pick your own blackberries have pretty much played out down here in South Mississippi, though you may have a little more luck if you live in the northern part of our state. Of course, you'll still find California berries in the markets everywhere on through early fall, and probably even some from Central or South America too. Local, or as local as you can get, are always going to be the best.

Butter stewed potatoes, are whole new potatoes or small, cut up red potatoes, steam cooked in butter and often sprinkled with herbs, such as parsley.

Butter Steamed New Potatoes

No secret here that I love potatoes I suppose. Seriously, set a pot of stewed potatoes in front of me and I'm perfectly happy to enjoy them as my meal.

Truth is, potatoes have long been a large part of the southern diet because with commonly large families, they filled a lot of bellies rather cheaply. Just like there is no one single way to make a southern fried chicken and there's no such single magic mashed potato recipe, there are a multitude of other ways to fix the spud.

Drip-less homemade popsicles, made using flavored Jello gelatin, unsweetened Kool-Aid and sugar.

Homemade Popsicles

I have a confession. With this hot summer we've had this year, I have had way more of these homemade popsicles than any adult woman of a certain age should ever lay claim to. We've had a little bit of a respite from the heat for these past couple of days thanks to plenty of rain, but, hey... since kids love them too, if you want an excuse to have one (or six) to help keep you cool, make some for your kids or grandkids.

Gimme Some Sugar Darlin'

"Filled with tongue-in-cheek Southern humor, here's a cookbook worth reading... and it's got good recipes too." ~Tripleheart Press

"Southern cuisine is the ultimate comfort food... created by people who had to use whatever limited resources were available during tough times, and we've had more tough times than not in the South." ~Laurance Triplette

I had the pleasure of corresponding with Laurance Daltroff Triplette for the first time a few months back, when she wrote me the sweetest email about my website, and after a few exchanges, kindly offered to send me a copy of her new cookbook, Gimme Some Sugar Darlin', to review. After corresponding with her several times since, I believe that Laurie, as she is known to her friends, and I, are indeed kindred souls of the Banana Pudding Republic.

I loved Laurie's cookbook from the moment I opened it and found myself quickly wrapped up in what was more like looking through a well worn, loved one's recipe box, served up with a side scrapbook of memories. I felt instantly connected to Laurie and if I know the readers here, and I think I do, you will want to order a copy of this cookbook yesterday.